The Qalyoub train collision occurred at a converging junction in Qalyoub to the north of

Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

on 21 August 2006, when two

commuter Commuting is periodically recurring travel between a place of residence and place of work or study, where the traveler, referred to as a commuter, leaves the boundary of their home community. By extension, it can sometimes be any regular o ...

train A train (from Old French , from Latin">-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ... , from Latin , "to pull, to draw") is a series of connected vehicles th ...

s collided during the morning rush hour, killing 58 people and injuring over 140.

Overview

A passenger train from

Mansoura Mansoura (; ', , rural: ) is a city in Egypt located on the eastern bank of the Damietta branch of the Nile river. The city is the capital of the Dakahlia Governorate and has a population of 621,953 as of 2021. Etymology ''Mansoura'' in Arabic ...

passed a red signal and crashed into a stationary train that had come from

Benha Banha ( ) is the capital of the Qalyubiyya Governorate in north-eastern Egypt. Between the capital of Cairo and the city of Tanta, Banha is an important transport hub, as rail lines from Cairo to various cities in the Nile Delta pass through it. ...

. Four

passenger car A car, or an automobile, is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of cars state that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people rather than cargo. There are around one billio ...

s derailed in the accident, which closed the line in the country's

Nile Delta The Nile Delta (, or simply , ) is the River delta, delta formed in Lower Egypt where the Nile River spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of the world's larger deltas—from Alexandria in the west to Port Said in the eas ...

region. The train was estimated to have been travelling at more than at the time of the collision. The driver of the Mansoura service was amongst the dead.

Aftermath

In the wake of the crash,

Egyptian National Railways Egyptian National Railways (ENR; ) is the national railway of Egypt and managed by the parastatal Egyptian Railway Authority (ERA; ). History 1833–1877 In 1833, Muhammad Ali Pasha considered building a railway between Suez and Cairo to impr ...

director Hanafi Abdel Qawi was dismissed and 14 railway officials were later charged with gross negligence and jailed. The prosecutor's office said the officials ignored repairing some technical equipment that control train signals. Egypt has a poor safety record on its railways and there are several fatal crashes each year, usually blamed on inadequately maintained equipment. Families of each victim who died in the accident received

compensation Compensation may refer to: *Financial compensation *Compensation (chess), various advantages a player has in exchange for a disadvantage *Compensation (essay), ''Compensation'' (essay), by Ralph Waldo Emerson *Compensation (film), ''Compensation'' ...

of £E5,000 (about $US870). Passengers who were injured will get £E1,000.

Proposed upgrade

Egypt is proposing to implement an upgrade project including some upgrade of its signalling.

Similar accidents

* 1908 -

Sunshine Sunlight is the portion of the electromagnetic radiation which is emitted by the Sun (i.e. solar radiation) and received by the Earth, in particular the visible light perceptible to the human eye as well as invisible infrared (typically per ...

(Braybrook Junction)

References

External links